ISP's which banter the 'up to 8Mb' slogan about will have to be more careful following a ruling by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA).

This follows a complaint from NTL against rival ISP Bulldog following it's TV and press campaign for its products and will have implications for ADSL providers.

The problem, as most people know, is that 8Mbps speeds are only actually available to those who live within 3km of the exchange, and sometimes even these will experience problems due to line quality. Cable on the other hand doesn't suffer in the same way and can provide the service with little degradation of service.
NTL stated that 35% of ADSL customers who live 3.8km from the exchange can only receive 5Mbps.

Because of this the ASA ruled that Bulldog would have to make it very clear that top speeds will "vary significantly" depending on where customers live.
This will have a knock-on effect for all ADSL advertisements, but will favour cable providers who no doubt will use this as new sales pitch.